A message coming through in Scottish education right now is that collaboration is the way to go. If we want to provide the best opportunities for the kids we’re teaching, we might not have the best method, or the best resources, or the best ideas ourselves. Sharing is the obvious answer, and that’s a big part of what Glow is for. The interface itself is important, but more important is the culture-shift that I hope it will bring about.
Once upon a time there were books, and we used the books we had in the store cupboard. Then there were Banda machines (I’m told – actually even as recently as last year I’ve found some Banda sheets kicking about school) and we could share a bit more. And then there were photocopiers, and we could type up our units, carefully glue in the pictures and graphs, and copy as far as the budget allowed. Teachers could share units with their colleagues, but changing them maybe wasn’t so easy.
Enter the computer age (and for any schools I’ve experienced we’re not talking much before 1995) and we could create, save and change our work. We could stick it on a bit of magnetic film encased in blue plastic (I always preferred the blue floppy-disks) and give it to our colleagues, and maybe our friends from other schools if they asked nicely. And they could use it as it was, or alter it. We’re still talking paper, though, in the end. Still with the dead trees.
Then let’s skip forward to 2002, when I started training to be a teacher. Every class in my first school had a networked computer with internet access, and they were occasionally used, but not every day. Every teacher and pupil had email, but the teachers really didn’t use it, and if the pupils did it was frowned upon. There were two data projectors and one interactive whiteboard in a department of ten classes, and there’s not a hint of sarcasm when I say that was pretty far reaching - in my third placement the projector was kept in a bag in cupboard and had to be run through a stand-alone laptop.
Now, the teachers in my department at the first school had at their disposal the means to revolutionise their teaching. They all had Microsoft Office, but only one of them had used PowerPoint before. They all had Microsoft Word, and yet the units I found in use were typed or handwritten relics on peach and lime coloured paper. They had the means to share anything they created through email, but no-one knew their own email address, and most hadn’t ever opened Microsoft Outlook (this isn’t a plug for MS, by the way, I’m just reporting facts). This is no criticism of them. A shift was happening, and it was just beginning. The old ways were still the best, or the best known ways, and people had yet to become confident about what they could do for ICT, and what ICT could do for them.
Only six years later, and the world of teaching has been revolutionised. In the same school, communication is almost solely via email. Each department has a shared network space for courses, tracking data, individual resources and more. Instead of passing the dog-eared units from one class to the next, the file is emailed, adapted to suit the needs of the new class, and passed on when required. We still kill a fair amount of trees in copying, but nowhere near as many. Every class in the department has a data projector, every class bar one has an interactive whiteboard, and everyone is confident using and amending the files they need. Teachers and pupils communicate through blogs and email, kids Bluetooth their homework to their teachers, and the teaching world has changed.
What about the attitudes to sharing though? Everyone at that school is more than happy to share with their colleagues, which is a good start. Instead of everyone having to be good at everything, strengths emerged in different skills and all this is to the benefit of the pupils. So how about taking the next step and sharing with our colleagues in other schools, or dare I say it, other local authorities?
Ah, now there the barriers still exist. When I was still in the classroom, I became good friends with a colleague who was covering a maternity post. She was an excellent teacher, and was snapped up, when job time came around, by a well regarded school within the same authority. We’d spent our year working together in close collaboration, be it team teaching or sharing and co-creating resources, and there was no reason to stop at least the last two of these when she moved on (if it were today, we could have done all three with Glow meet – shameless plug). We continued to send each other things we’d made, and being kind souls, allowed the other to share them with their department. Then a wonderful thing happened: our colleagues started sharing their resources, through us, with the other school. We doubled the brainpower, doubled the man-hours, and doubled the creativity available to us. I’d say, between the two schools, there now exists one of the best set of English resources around. From having to physically hand over resources from one teacher to another, having to find a place to keep them and having to reprint them when so many pages had fallen off that even sharing one between three was difficult, we’d gone in a few years to having a vast library of thousands of resources for hundreds of units, for all courses, available on demand and infinitely adaptable. I can’t express how amazing that seems, and how wonderful it’s been to be a part of it.
But we’re not quite there yet. The link between the two schools began with two friends, and it began with trust. Trust that we’d get credit for the original work, even if we said we really didn’t mind. Trust that the people who used what we’d made would share what they’d made. As soon as it’s suggested that resources are placed on the local authority intranet, or even scarier, on Glow for the whole nation to use, you can smell the panic. I can certainly empathise – there’s that dread certainty that two or three years down the line someone will email you this brilliant unit their friend made, and you realise that it’s something you did many moons ago with a few tweaks and a new by-line. There’s also the perceived unfairness – why should I work so hard and create this stuff, when someone can download it for free and get the good end results I get but without the graft? Even worse, why should I, in a school in a disadvantaged area, work tirelessly to give my pupils opportunities others take for granted and to improve results, then give all that hard work to a teacher in a school in a well-off area and let them widen the gap again? I think as a nation and as a profession we have a strong sense of fairness and justice, and the idea of someone getting the benefit of something we’ve done when we have no personal investment is a bitter pill.
However, we’re on the right road. If we can go from sharing with our friends in our department, to sharing with our colleagues in the same school, to sharing with our friends in other schools, to sharing with our friends’ colleagues in other schools, I think we can take the crucial step to sharing with those that are more than two steps removed from us. It won’t be easy, but we know why we’re doing it, and we know we can get a lot out of it too.
I hope to look back on this post in a few years time and remember that weird transitional phase when all the tools were there to share but we hadn’t made the mental adjustment yet, and smile at how unaware we were of the great things to come. Glow is giving us opportunities hitherto unheard of in education to widen our students’ minds and experiences, and I for one can’t wait.
8 Comments
